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If you’ve attended a science fiction convention in the past 20+ years on the east coast, your path is very likely to have crossed with this man’s..

…Yes, he travels with that chair.

…….Ok, not really. But he totally could, and no one would question it.

Why, you ask?

Because this gentleman is Hugh Casey, one of the finest people you’ll ever find in (or out of) the world of science fiction fandom. As his bio states, Hugh is…

A long-time con-goer, he’s been a member of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society (PSFS) since the early-’90’s, where he served, at various times, as President, Vice-President, and on the Board of Directors. He’s also served as Chairman and Vice-Chair for PHILCON, Philly’s regional SF con, as well as it’s head of programming for several years …. He is a filmmaker with his own production company, Parents Basement Productions, and his short films “Teddy’s Big Escape” and “Young Geeks In Love” can be found on YouTube. He is also a writer, director, actor, blogger, photographer, event manager and promoter, and more. He tries to live by Clarke’s Law, “Specialization is for insects”.

(His bio neglects to mention, of course, that Hugh was a Guest of Awesome at Pi-Con in 2010. Perhaps no one has earned that title more than Hugh!)

Now, east coast fandom hasn’t seen as much of Hugh in the past few years because of his fight with, and now recovery from, cancer. To help out with his financial needs, a bunch of his friends have organized…HUGHCON!!

“What izzit what izzit WHAT IZZIT???” you ask?

HUghCon is a fundraiser where all proceeds will go to Hugh! Throughout the day/evening, attendees will be treated to the music of Philadelphia’s own Star Trek tribute band, The Roddenberries, as well as the musical tapestry that is This Way to the Egress! (If you’re not familiar with them, there are some music links at the bottom of this post.)

Attendees will also have the opportunity to bid on some fantastic silent auction items such as a copy of the book Who Killed Amanda Palmer (signed by photographer Kyle Cassidy, writer Neil Gaiman, and musician Amanda Palmer!), a first edition of the board game Conquest of the Empire (unopened, circa 1984), a geektastic gift basket of goodies from the Pennsylvania Browncoats, and much more! Book, jewelry, and garb vendors will be on hand for your gift buying needs, with a portion of those proceeds going to Hugh as well.

SO MUCH STUFF, Y’ALL!!

Admission for the event is $15 pre-sale ($16.20 with tax), $20 at the door. The best part of this event? You can buy a ticket even if you can’t go to the event, and that money goes directly to Hugh!! So even though I can’t go because of prior obligations and, ya know, Philly being 12 hours away, I’m delighted I could still purchase a ticket and help support this love-filled event for this fantastic man.

Thanks for reading. Please share if you’re so inclined! And, really, go take a peek at the FB page..there’s so much awesome being planned to support Hugh, one of the best people and brightest stars in fandom. ❤

Many years ago, I was at a party thrown by, and attended by, varied people from a Philadelphia BBS. (This would be internet-before-the-world-wide-web, when we connected via modems and messaging systems, when 2400 baud was still pretty common and 9600 was incredibly fast and why are you laughing?? Get off my lawn!)

Ahem.

So. There was this party where people were bringing in videos of things most of us had never seen. It’s where I first saw “Bambi VS Godzilla” and “Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown,” as well as several of the Warner Bros. cartoons that are too politically incorrect to be shown anymore (although you can find them easily enough on YouTube).

And then someone walked in with an animated film – Japanimation, to give you an idea of how far back this story goes – that needed a bit of explanation. “This isn’t in English,” he said. “I have no idea what it’s really about. But it’s awesome and you have to watch it.”

But that’s not to say I won’t give it a chance. I think it’s one of the personality traits I find most frustrating in other people, the inability to give something new a chance, to give it 10 minutes of your life and see if it’s worth 10 minutes more. (This is a concept my friend Gwendolyne introduced to me, and it’s brilliant.) I’m not always good about this practice, myself; but I know that when I am, those are 10 minutes of understanding/experience/compassion that enrich my life, and so really, I can’t recommend the idea highly enough.

…And part of me still kinda wants to snuggle a totoro.

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Back Story:
Several years ago, the ever-magical SJ Tucker found herself in need of emergency medical care and, being an uninsured musician, this was a pretty scary financial monster to face down alone.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to. A collection of varied bits of creativity was put together under the title Ravens in the Library and all proceeds from the sales went directly to help cover s00j’s medical costs.

It was an amazing act of love..and it was a smashing success.

One of the people that helped make the book happen, Elizabeth R. McClellan, (also known as Popelizbet in other realms) has found herself in need of some financial help for shoulder surgery, and so a call went out for submissions for an e-chapbook with a similar financial goal. And I’m in it! 🙂

Pre-orders for Angels of the Meanwhile are being taken now, in a pay-what-you-wish format, here: http://alexandraerin.dreamwidth.org/636831.html. Please note that the final e-chapbook won’t be available until June; pre-orders are being taken for some emergency fundraising in relation to Elizabeth’s surgery, so you’re very encouraged to order NOW, but you’ll have to wait a bit to actually get your hands on the finished product.

I’m very happy to be a very small part of this project. Popelizbet has done a lot of really good things for a lot of really good people…it’s lovely to see her community coming together to help her now.

Like this:

A friend moved away recently. I wasn’t able to go say goodbye in person, and so I decided to make a gift to send as a ‘welcome to your new home’ kind of thing. It was a cross stitch I designed, stitched, fussed over…procrastinated over…finally framed it and set it aside to be mailed.

The whole process took several months. And at the end of it, I realized a few unexpected facts about the friendship. The biggest one? We weren’t on the level of friendship I thought we were.

That’s weird, right? How did I not realize that?

Fact is, she had already walked away from the friendship during the time I was stitching away. So I clearly had a lot more invested in that connection than she did. How does that happen?

But it does.

I think it’s a bit like the kerfluffle we’ve seen on varied social media networks where we connect to people as “friends.” They’re not. It takes more than the click of a button to become friends with another person. And I’ve been on the other end of this thread more than once, where I’ve had someone insist on a strong friendship connection and the reality is we only ever saw each other at conventions, or at social events maybe once a year.

That’s an acquaintance. And that’s important in its own way. Years ago, a convention friend looked at me and said, “We’ve traveled around the country together with this convention.” That statement made me stop for a moment and really think about these threads of connection we have as a result of the events we attend. People become such a huge element of the event, it gives us a sense of home in a lot of ways. If I go to, say, Arisia, I will feel at home because there are people there that I only see there and if they weren’t there, I would not feel as comfortable or connected. The community is part of what makes the convention appealing for me.

Is that a friend? It’s a degree of friend, sure. But, at least for me, that title has to be about more than 30 minutes or so during a weekend once a year. Even if those 30 minutes or so time happen once a year for a decade…there’s more to the job description of ‘friend’ than that. In a lot of ways, you’re seeing someone at their social best, so just like any other relationship, you can’t get to know them unless you’re actively involved in each other’s lives.

So how did I miss that we weren’t matching those criteria?

I’m not sure.

As a very wise friend pointed out to me, it’s instinctive to put energy into a relationship you can see needs some help, and that only works well when you’re both defining things the same way. Which is why it feels like a smack on the nose with a newspaper when you realize that the energy you’ve been putting into a connection isn’t reciprocated. And that’s something I hadn’t considered when I’ve been on the other side of this ‘wait you thought this was a friendship?’ fence.

Does it change anything in my day to day life to not have this person I defined as a friend say, in effect, “sorry, that’s all you”?

No. No, not really.

But I think it’s important that we really see ourselves. In this case, I was doing something that I haven’t understood when other people did it to me. Kinda funny. Kinda frustrating. Definitely an ‘opportunity for growth,’ as they say.

I’ll probably get it wrong again. So I’m putting it in writing to let PresentMe tell FutureMe, “HEY! You knew better!”

Over the weekend, friends of mine in east coast fandom started sharing news links about attendees of Fur Fest being evacuated from their convention hotel because of a deliberate release of chlorine gas into the hotel space. Fandom was pissed, and for good reason.

Details of the criminal act:

The Hyatt-Regency in Rosemont was completely evacuated at roughly 1AM. (For those of us that have attended TransWorld? Yes, it’s that Rosemont.) Guests sought shelter in nearby hotels and in the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. 19 attendees ended up going to the hospital. Powdered chlorine was found in a stairwell on the 9th floor of the hotel. Firefighters on the scene reported that there was a reading “as high as 20.6 on the chlorine meter” and also stated that “whatever the substance is, it is overloading our chlorine meter.”

To give you an idea of how bad a rating of 20.6ppm is? Let’s go back to Wikipedia, because this article references a bunch of stuff I was already going to include…. “Chlorine is a toxic gas that irritates the respiratory system. Because it is heavier than air, it tends to accumulate at the bottom of poorly ventilated spaces. Chlorine gas is a strong oxidizer, which may react with flammable materials.[67] Chlorine is detectable with measuring devices in concentrations of as low as 0.2 parts per million (ppm), and by smell at 3 ppm. Coughing and vomiting may occur at 30 ppm and lung damage at 60 ppm. About 1000 ppm can be fatal after a few deep breaths of the gas.[24] Breathing lower concentrations can aggravate the respiratory system, and exposure to the gas can irritate the eyes.[68] The toxicity of chlorine comes from its oxidizing power. When chlorine is inhaled at concentrations above 30 ppm, it begins to react with water and cells, which change it into hydrochloric acid (HCl) and hypochlorous acid (HClO).” And the CDC cautions, “Hazardous concentrations may develop quickly in enclosed, poorly-ventilated, or low-lying areas. Keep out of these areas.”

If you’re wondering what it was like to be there, here’s one attendee’s story of what it was like to try to get off the 9th floor via the stairwell.

So having this crap in a stairwell that people were forced to use during the hotel evacuation? Really bad news.

Ok. So someone exposed a bunch of convention attendees to a hazardous gas. Good reason for fandom to be pissed off.

So why the hell was my Facebook news feed flooded on Tuesday with stories about reporters laughing about this story?

These folk are more commonly known as “furries”..some of the most maligned people in fandom.

If you’ve ever been in downtown Pittsburgh in June or July, you may well have seen this charming sector of fandom running around the city in mascot-esque costumes during the weekend run of Anthrocon. It’s rather adorable, actually…the variety of detail and creativity in the costuming is lovely to see. One collection of photos can be found here. And if you have either never heard of a furry or you think it’s some deviant sex group, I strongly encourage you to go take a look through that album, or any of the others on Anthrocon’s site.

Fur Fest is one of the largest conventions of its kind, warmly received by the Hyatt-Regency, whose Twitter feed shows some great love and support for Fur Fest. (Really, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a convention hotel be so sweet to a con. I mean, really..themed meal options? A free room contest? This hotel is pretty awesome!)

This convention had roughly 4,600 attendees from 15 different countries.

According to Furfest’s website, “Our charity, Critter Camp Exotic Pet Sanctuary, was able to raise $11,000 by charitable donations from our attendees and an additional $20,000 was donated from Midwest Furry Fandom, Inc., our parent 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. Part of our core mission is to raise money for animal focused charities in the Midwest.” HOLY POOP THAT’S GREAT!!

But what do most people know about the event?

They know that reporters over on MSNBC responded to a story about 19 people being sent to the hospital as a result of a criminal act by laughing on the air and having one of their reporters run off camera because she couldn’t deal with the idea of people wearing fur suits.

How far is this, really, from the media making fun of fandom and costuming of any sort?

And then think, really think, about what this story, and the sadly common public reaction to this story, is saying.

Because, while this is a very dramatic story? It’s not an isolated incident sort of story. Fire alarms get pulled at conventions to force con attendees out of hotels and into the street..sometimes to try to ’embarrass’ the costumed attendees, sometimes to evict attendees that don’t have hotel rooms. I’ve read a lot of stories today about what sometimes happens at conventions, and I’m appalled at what people are doing to my fellow geeks.

Most of my fellow con goers can tell me of at least one convention they’ve attended where there was another group of people in the same hotel that didn’t appreciate sharing hotel space with fandom or haunters. We’ve seen the looks of disapproval and we’ve heard the grumblings. It’s not hard at all to imagine a repeat of what happened at Fur Fest last weekend.

If you have something you love enough to attend a convention to celebrate? Do not think for a second that your convention is immune from something like this. The only way that works is if we stop trying to decide who ‘counts’ – which passion is ok to have and which one isn’t good enough.

Each of us, every single one of us, has an interest, a something we love that makes us a geek.